Okay, finally managed to get flash working so I could listen to the NPR report on the Webbys and how they relate to SuperDeluxe and CollegeHumor.

It seems to be an issue of quality vs. quantity. SD seems content to make lots of small deals for videos, paying just enough to get ideas produced, and hoping that of the 100s of videos they post in a year, at least a few of them will hit really big.

CH, meanwhile, while being far less prolific, has come to focus on making exceptional product, with an average of one or two “polished” videos debuting each week. By focusing more on user-uploaded content being the bread-and-butter of the site, they’ve managed to make their original content feel  “special” and thus spotlight it, allowing each one to reach far more people. I think they’ve chosen the better business model of the two. They aren’t relying on their people to make an unreasonable amount of content; rather, they allow their large community to do that for them. SD tried this for a while, but seemed to give up on the idea early on.

I first want to stress that I LOVE the shorts on College Humor, and overall I think the content they produce is absolutely fantastic. That being said, I’d be curious to know how much money is spent on producing one of their more polished shorts, as well as their operating overheard for their production staff / facilities. Now, for all I know, they may be working with the same budgets that we are used to for an episode of one of my shows. The production values and effects they incorporate, however, indicates they probably have deeper pockets for individual pieces. That makes sense, since they generate far less content in-house than SuperDeluxe (even though SD essentially uses outside contractors and has no real in-house content suppliers).

How does this topic relate to me personally? 

Well, it frustrates me that I take an extremely meager budget, stretch it as thin as possible to make high-quality  content, then have it get featured for a day and subsequently buried among a mountain of mostly mediocre videos. It’s not a matter of how much money I personally make. I get pretty well-compensated for the other projects I work on, and I’m used to being relatively poor. But I’d much rather be slaving over a short for no pay if I thought the company that commisioned it actually gave a shit about how good it comes out, or wasn’t going to dismiss it if it doesn’t get 10,000 views the first day.

That’s the other problem, the type of material that goes up on SD. In the last year SD has turned away from finding original, unique ideas for videos, and instead has focused on subject matter that is topical, low-brow, and has potential to “go viral.” I hear “viral” so much it’s becoming a dirty word (think “edgy” circa 1998). I don’t want to say that everone on SD is making shitty content, because obviously that’s not true. There’s a lot of things that go up that impress me, either by how funny and original they are, or how impressive a job they do with the budget available. I also can’t speak of how much money everyone on SD has to make their shorts with, but I can share what a typical short film that I work on costs. Take for example  one of the more elaborate shoots I’ve done, the Brunch episode of Freeloader’s Guide.

We had $2500 to make this episode. To anyone making their own shorts without a company financing them, this may sound like a lot of money (I certainly thought it was when we first got the deal with SD). But keep in mind there’s equipment to rent, actors to pay, supplies to purchase, props, location fees, post-production expenses, music costs, etc. Each short we produce is a full independent production, and we are responsible for documenting and financing every piece of it, including paying our own salary (assuming we took any money for salary, which we usually don’t).

We’re currently planning a shoot on Monday and Tuesday that involves Jay Johnston and the Sklar Brothers, all of whom are doing it for free because they like the idea and like what Jonah and I have done in the past. I hate not paing people, but we keep getting requests for “big ideas” in our shorts, and big ideas usually aren’t cheap. This one happens to be especially big, and I think it’s gonna turn out fantastic. But it probably would be just a little bit better if we’d had even another $2,000 to spend. 

Now, obviously we do this for the love of, well, doing it. I’m not complaining about that. But I think there’s a smarter way to go about this, and I hate to see a good company like SD get into any further financial straits by blindly chasing the “more original content = more hits” myth. Quality vs. Quantity. Quality always wins.

Congratulations to the shows on both “networks” that were nominated for awards, and here’s to making even better shorts in the future

I’d love to hear feedback from anyone at either company in regards to what I’ve had to say about this. Email me at peter at peteratencio.com